


What We Sought

by linoleumfloor



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Gender-neutral Reader, M/M, Multi, also put this on like three diff sites on the same day, i guess also au-ish bc it's an insert, i just didnt have the time n internet to put it here, obito is mostly mentioned tbh but he still has relevance, of course it's also angst™, or put it on gotvg, rin's also mentioned, the obito/rin is like?? played with bc it's mentioned but only as obito crushing on rin whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 20:45:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10670448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linoleumfloor/pseuds/linoleumfloor
Summary: Even someone as suave as Konoha's local heartthrob couldn't get everything he wanted.





	What We Sought

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [One Summer Day](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/284757) by tobitobi. 



"could you love me like him?" he asks, though he's known what your answer would be the moment you told him that he tried so hard to be in your life because he wanted to fill in the gaps that obito cut into your heart.

you don't look back at him after he asks you his question, instead only looking ahead of you. the irony in your actions had vaguely stuck into your mind. you pretend to look forward, to only go ahead in life.

but you can still hear words from the past, from behind where you stand in life, echo and stay with you. you keep them on your sleeves, in your mind, written throughout your body for eternity. "could you love me like him?" he repeats, and for a moment you feel like you hear obito in his words when he asks you "could you love me-" only to cut off into the real world.

into reality.

the unfortunate truth had been that behind those words, it was not obito asking you to love him. he was not breathing, his heart wasn't beating for you. the blood that would run through his veins was no more, and now you could only imagine the smile he wore before he left you alone for good. your unfortunate truth would be that you loved a boy from the past, you loved the one that got away. 

you breathe in, then out. in, and out. you look down from the setting sky to turn your attention to the still-waiting kakashi.

"you don't have to," he says, and you hear the emotions that whirlwind across his words. _'i wish you could'_ is what he wants to tell you verbally, but he feels his throat clench and his mouth stop in place before he can let it out. "you don't have to," is what suffices for him, is all he can say because his gut tells him that this is karma for not saving rin fast enough that day so his team could still be alive and breathing and here.

maybe he wouldn't love you if obito were here. maybe he wouldn't want to kiss you like you were the only thing grounding him to the corporeal world, he wouldn't want you to love the way he hugged you or ran his fingers through your hair. if you loved him back maybe he wouldn't feel such agony in wanting you so much that he felt his insides tear up.

but he couldn't force love, he knew that. he couldn't force you to want to bring your lips to the scars he gained from battles against opponents whose weapons marred his body. he couldn't force you to mend the wounds that crept under his skin, under the mask that hid not only the scar of his biggest mistake, but hid what fragile emotions he kept for only those important to him. 

kakashi was stuck in the eye of a hurricane. his reflection on his feelings was the calm of the storm, the only part of him that went slow. his feelings, of love and hatred and confusion, everything that he learned to feel was rampaging around him. he could feel the winds of his love for you be followed by hesitation and doubt, he could feel what he thought was betrayal against obito's wishes rise up in the storm that had already been running wild suddenly surge and set the course of his hurricane toward more inner turmoil.

he identified with obito more than he ever had before. he had loved someone who pined for someone else.

in a different life, he supposed, you could reciprocate the feelings he grew for you over time. but things weren't easy, and throughout his life he had been shown it wouldn't be simple time and time again. in a different life, but this was the life he lived now. this was the life he set out for himself because of his stubbornness and unwillingness to break the rules and become scum. now, he had to live with that fact that on his watch, two of his friends died and that made him almost as worse as scum despite not at all trying to turn his back on them.

"you know how i feel, i can't change that," you say to him. _'i'm sorry that i can't love you'_ is what you meant. what else could you tell him, what could you give him that didn't already die off with obito that day? 

you gave him hope that he could save people, that he wouldn't completely break what promise he made to obito all those years ago. you hugged him and ran your fingers through his hair and in those few moments of bliss kakashi could live in the fake world where you loved him as much as he loved you. you would grasp his hands and wear his clothes and sleep in his room. but you laced your fingers with his to take him to various places in the village to adventure, you two were friends. there were no string attached, no loving kisses placed against his knuckles or against his masked cheek. just friends, and that was that.

you just couldn't give him the feelings he wanted. somewhere in you, you wanted to reciprocate those same feelings for him. you wanted to give him the love he deserved but you just weren't the one to give it. all of it was reserved for a dead boy, and both you and kakashi knew that.

obito brought you to the village, he gave you what no one else had thought to give you in so long; companionship. he was your first real friend, and though you were children, you realized as an adult that he was your first love. he made a promise to become hokage, and to make people recognize you in the process. he gave you experiences that kakashi couldn't top.

yet, obito died loving rin.

obito was your past, the one thing that you chased after despite knowing that nothing good would come from it. kakashi was the present, the future. he was here and alive and hopelessly in love with a you that was a mess of a shinobi. you knew that he would always be there, waiting for you to take his hand to step forward into the life ahead of you.

long ago, you had come to terms with the fact that you couldn't bring a corpse back to life no matter how much you wanted to. you understood that you couldn't change his feelings for rin while he was on his death bed. you loved him, and it felt like hell. he was home, he was everything to you and when you thought you could get your happy ending, it's ripped away from you before you even get within arms length of it.

you didn't even see him be taken away from you, you couldn't hear his last words. 

not everyone gets the happy ending they want or deserve, and not everyone gets to live no matter how important they are to you. you didn't get your happy future with obito, kakashi couldn't get a happy present with you. 

no, you couldn't love kakashi. you couldn't even try to pretend to love him back. you couldn't give him the false hope that one day you would truly fall for him like he so dangerously fell for you. "i can't." and you feel tears start to bubble and the heat in your face start to rise. 

kakashi brings a hand up to wipe what tears start to fall, but you stop him. you step back and look away from him once more. "you could do better." and he goes to wrap his arms around your form, to tell you that it's okay that you don't want to love him back.

love is painful, it is harmful. it consumes your life, and no matter how much you don't want to believe in it, it still comes back to stab you in the heart. you can't control that you love someone who won't come back to you, who won't smile or speak again. you can't control the moment he decided to give you a chance at friendship, the moment when you realized that maybe you also had a chance to find someone who would keep on loving you until their dying breath. and when someone like that turned up, you still couldn't find it in you to accept him into your life like that.

in the end, you tell the man in front of you "i love him, kakashi," and he feels what little of his facade of pretending things will be okay start to crumble.

"i dont think i ever stopped."

**Author's Note:**

> stop shaming me i got into naruto during january and it's running strong,,,
> 
> im also writing more angst bc as much as i love kakashi hatake i love the pain of angst,,, also trunks briefs from dbz but thats besides the point
> 
> ALSO YALL THE UNCAPITALIZED STUFF IS HOW I WRITE,,, IT'S A PERSONAL STYLE AND IF YOU'D LIKE TO SEE IT WITH MORE PROPER GRAMMAR IT'S ALSO ON LUNAESCENCE


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